


Risk

by YunhosFlower



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 00:14:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20684285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YunhosFlower/pseuds/YunhosFlower





	Risk

You never did this kind of stuff. 

As a rule you strayed further than anyone else you knew from risk taking endeavours and you generally stuck yourself pretty far away from anyone who regularly partook in things that you deemed ‘risk taking’. 

Some of which was considerably less than what most people would cut people off for, but you’d never really cared until now. 

And now, here you were, standing on the edge of a very very tall cliff, clutching on to a damn tree as your only support line. 

“Song Mingi, I’m going to fucking kill you.” You half screeched half gasped when a few rocks tumbled past you, most barely larger than your fist and crumbling into even smaller pieces by the time they passed you. 

“Listen if we get out of this alive then you have my full permission on that one.” You glared upwards at Mingi, who was in a potentially more life endangering situation than even yourself, the muscles and tendons in his arm straining to hold his considerable bulky mass off of a much smaller tree than your own. 

You knew you should be terrified for him, the same way that you were terrified for you, but you couldn’t find an ounce of sympathy in yourself for him in this particular moment. 

“I hate you.” You spat angrily upwards, earning a look bordering on disbelief from your friend. A friend that you’d made only because you thought he was a mellow guy who wanted to go on a damn picnic this afternoon, not surprise rock climbing with no safety equipment. 

Then again, you could barely place the blame solely on Mingi’s broad shoulders, because you’d had every opportunity to say no and walk away and you hadn’t. Because for once you’d wanted to be the fun girl who didn’t walk away and go back to the safety of her room. 

Fat lot of good that did you now. 

“As much as I don’t want to die, I kind of hope that I do and that’s the last thing you’ll ever have said to me.” Mingi returned back, his voice shaking and giving away the real fear he was feeling. As you watched him, one of his fingers, white knuckled from his desperate grip on the tree trunk, slipped. 

Leaving him with only three fingers a thumb keeping him suspended and alive. 

You began to panic. 

“Mingi-” Much as you despised him for getting you both into this situation, you’d genuinely liked him up until an hour ago when he’d decided to become a risk taker. And even then, you’d liked him enough that you’d wanted to finally step outside of your comfort zone for you. 

He peered down at you, his jaw taut and eyes narrowed, maybe to hide the tears beginning to give them a shine. Your heart ached. 

“We’re gonna get outta here, okay?” You whispered, hoping that if he couldn’t hear the broken scramble of words, he would be able to figure out what you meant by the expression on your face. 

He drew in a breath that you watched shudder throughout his entire body, forcing a half hearted smile onto his mouth for your sake. 

“Yeah.” He agreed, his lack of confidence making tears fill your own eyes. 

You had no idea how you were supposed to fix this, how either of you were supposed to escape the current predicament you found yourselves in. 

Maybe if just one of you had of had the brain cells to remain on the top of the cliff, it wouldn’t have been such a problem. But you hadn’t planned for the face of the cliff to be so unstable... you hadn’t planned for a lot of things. 

“For the record, if I do die, I’m really sorry.” Mingi calls down, breaking the tense silence with his deep voice, which was gravelly with emotion now. You shiver once, trying to push the thought of him falling out of your mind. 

“You’re not dying, fuck. Shut up.” You huffed in irritation, casting your gaze desperately around. 

As you did an ear splintering crack rent the air and you looked up in horror to see that Mingi was running out of time a lot quicker than before, his legs swinging wildly as he struggled to retain some hold on the barely hanging on tree. 

He was down to two fingers and a thumb now and as strong as he was, you were pretty even Mingi’s strength wasn’t going to accomodate that little help much longer. 

“Mingi.” You choked, wishing desperately there was something better that you could than just cling to your own tree, which for the time being seemed safely stable enough that you weren’t in any danger until your arms grew too tired to hold on any longer. 

You thanked yourself finally for all that time spent in your home gym working out when you could’ve been out taking risks like this. 

“Y/n, uh,” Mingi was panting now, tears falling freely down his tanned cheeks as he tilted his head down to look at you. “I really like you.” 

You might have scoffed if you didn’t feel like screaming out your fear and horror at how much his arm was trembling now to hold him up. 

“I don’t know if now is the best time for this discussion.” You shot back, managing to raise an eyebrow before a shrill shriek or terror ripped out of you when another, less violent, crack filled the air. Mingi grit his teeth, sticking his jaw out stubbornly. 

You really hated how beautiful he looked even with tears falling over his cheeks and clinging to his eyelashes. 

“Well honestly this might be my last chance to tell you,” he continued, almost as if you hadn’t spoken, as if he wasn’t a finger slipping breadth away from death right now. 

“Jesus Mingi,” you groaned. 

“And I really don’t wanna die in front of the girl I like without her at least knowing that I did this shit to impress her.” He was trying to laugh, but it sounded more like he was choking than anything else. 

“How about you don’t die and you can take me out on a normal date that doesn’t involve near death experiences.” You muttered, surprised when he laughed in response. You hadn’t expected him to be able to hear you from that far above. 

“It’s a date.” He shouted gleefully, for a moment making you forget the situation you were in. 

Below you was a drop that neither of you could possibly survive and though there was really less than a few metres that separated you from the top of the cliff and the side, there wasn’t enough stable rock face for either of you to risk letting go of your trees to climb back up. 

That was your reality. 

Just as you were drawing in a breath to shout some useless reply up to Mingi something caught your eye. 

A ledge, though barely that, jutted out just the right of one of Mingi’s wildly swinging feet. 

You were half surprised that you hadn’t seen it earlier and half angry. 

“Mingi, theres a ledge below your feet.” You said, leaning out from your tree direct your voice up to him. He pulled his chin in and glanced down, letting out a tiny huff of irritation and shock.

“You’re fucking kidding me.” You let out a relieved laugh at his exclamation, watching with bated breath as he wedged his foot into the crevice, waiting until he was somewhat stable to let go of the tree. 

No longer than two seconds after his weight was detached from it, it gave a last groan and snapped in half where his fingers had been. You both watched with widened eyes as it tumbled down past you. 

“Cool.” Mingi muttered sarcastically, glancing after it. You on the other hand were trying extremely hard to remember how to breathe, because you’d just watched the tree that had been keeping Mingi alive go crashing to the ground, something that could have happened while he was still holding onto it. 

Something that could happen to the tree you were holding onto.

“M-Mingi?” You whimpered, looking up at him. The sarcastic smile wiped off his face immediately, replaced with concern. 

“Y/N, I need you to stay calm.” He said in a soft voice, somehow managing to lower his deep tone further, keeping one hand attached to the cliff face as he knelt on his ledge. Kneeling brought his face a little closer to you and that partially comforted you amidst the growing storm in your head as your chest heaved for air. 

“Mingi, I’m going to die.” You told him weakly, closing your eyes tightly against the sight of his face twisting at your words. 

“No, you’re not.” He snapped. You wanted to believe that, you did. But you knew he couldn’t pull you up to that ledge with him, you’d be blind if you hadn’t seen the way his arm was still shaking from holding himself for so long. 

And you knew that your own arm was beginning to tire now, your fingers felt too numb around the part of the tree they gripped and your whole body was burning with the energy it was expending faster than it could create it. 

“I’m not gonna let you die.” Mingi spoke again, voice rougher than ever. You reopened your eyes and blinked away the tears. Crying wasn’t going to help either of you right now. 

“You can’t do anything to help me.” You pointed out softly to him as he shuffled closer the edge of the ledge, shoving his arm out in your vague direction as if testing the distance it could reach. He completely ignored your words, gaze set stubbornly on the length of his still shaking arm. 

“Mingi, would you listen? If you try to pull me up on that arm then you’re going to drop me.” 

He finally looked back at you, glaring this time. 

“You think I’m weak?” You could have screamed, really screamed, at him when the words left his lips. 

You’d just seen him holding his muscle heavy body mass up with just two fingers and a damn thumb, how could you ever think he was weak?

“Of course I don’t think you’re weak.”

“Then you don’t trust me?” An exasperated groan slipped from your lips and you clung tighter to your branch as a strong breeze swayed its way past you, wracking your body with light shivers. 

Your fingers were somehow even number now than they’d Been earlier and your new fear was that you wouldn’t even know that your grip was slipping when it happened.

“I do trust you!” Your teeth chattered as you spoke, your eyes sweeping desperately over Mingi’s crouched form. His dark hair had began to lose it’s straight edges at the back, lifting into cute little curls that you suddenly ached desperately to run your fingers through despite your current predicament. 

His eyes, which were filled now with desperation and worry, still looked like stars too you, that you wanted to drown amongst. 

“I like you too.” The look of shock on his face was comical, though you could bet the shock on your own face as the words escaped you unbidden was an equally hilarious sight to see.

“Right.” He nodded slowly, as if trying to process what you’d said. You didn’t have the heart to regret blurting your heart out when a wide smile cracked his face, narrowing his eyes to joyful slits and his white teeth flashing in the sun. 

“Then I better get you out of here so I can take you on a proper date, right?” He said when he’d managed to calm down his emotions. 

You just nodded, not knowing what else to do now. You still had no idea how he planned to get you out of here but at this point in time you were pretty sure that your fingers were beginning to peel from the tree. 

You heard Mingi draw in a deep breath a second before another shower of small rocks tumbled past you, followed by a surprised shout from above that was far too high pitched to have been Mingi. 

In a synchronised movement you both looked upwards, Mingi lifting a hand to shade his eyes from the sun while you attempted to squint around the bright rays.

A figure leaned over the edge of the cliff, dark black hair framing his face and thick lips parted in utter shock and disbelief at the sight before him. 

“..Wooyoung what are you looking at?” A voice echoed down, followed shortly by the appearance of a curious, blonde haired face peering down over the dark haired Wooyoung’s shoulder.

“Oh.” Mingi shifted, tilting his head further back to get a proper view of them, then to your surprise let out a tiny groan. 

“Woo? Yunho?”The blonde haired one grinned, shaking his head with a sparkle in his eyes. 

“Mingi what the hell have you done now?” 

“Just get us out would you?” The pair let out roaring laughs while you watched in confusion. 

“You’re so lucky that Hongjoong told us to come out here to check that you hadn’t been murdered or fallen off the cliff.” Wooyoung, the dark haired one, shouted down when the blonde disappeared with a few words that revolved around ‘rope’ and ‘idiot’. 

Mingi just let loose a string of curse words so quiet that you doubted Wooyoung could hear them. 

“Nice friends.” You muttered up to him, forcing in deep lungfuls of air. You were both going to be okay. 

“I hate them.” He muttered back, turning his attention back to you, his gaze flickering to your hands. 

“Wooyoung?” He called out suddenly, face almost a blank canvas. 

“Hm?” 

“Tell Yunho to hurry.” Mingi’s voice seemed strained and suddenly he was kneeling again, his arm stretching with more effort in your direction. You stared uncomprehendingly at his shaking fingers, still too far from you to actually be able to reach. 

“Y/N.” He said quietly, dark eyes holding yours intently. 

“What?” 

“I need you to hold on just a few more moments, okay?” Your eyes flicked to your hands, widening at the sight they met. Like you’d feared, your fingers had been so numb that you hadn’t felt them beginning to slip, realising now only because Mingi had pointed it out that you were only hanging on by two fingers. 

“Min, here.” The two voices above called out, a heavy rope tumbling down to hang in the space between our hands. Mingi grabbed at it, doing his best to swing it closer to you. 

You took a deep breath, waiting for it to come as close to you as it could before releasing one hand from the branch and grabbing it. 

The second your weight was fully supported by the rope, Mingi dragged it up until you were standing on his ledge with him, his arms wrapping tightly around you. 

You buried your face into his shoulder, the sobs that you'd been holding finally breaking free of your throat. 

“Sh, it’s okay.” Mingi murmured, his grip somehow tightening even more around you until it was a struggle to breathe. 


End file.
